Stop Stealing Dreams of the Future Generation

Seth Godin published a 30,000 word manifesto on education. Stop Stealing Dreams asks the difficult question, “What is school for?”

Godin argues that the school system that we have today was created in its time to produce compliant workers for the industrial revolution of the 1900s. We have a vastly different world right now and we don’t need workers for the factory system. We need to change the current educational system to respond to the needs of the present day information-driven economy that demands variety, not uniformity. Kids don’t need to memorize and get tested on data that is of practically no use in real life.

Some excerpts:

We can teach people to make commitments, to overcome fear, to deal transparently, to initiate and to plan a course.

We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate.

Learning is not done to you. Learning is something you choose to do.

Reinventing school:

Open book, open note, all the time

Access to any course anywhere in the world

Precise, focused instruction instead of mass, generalized instruction

Experience instead of test scores as a measure of achievement

Cooperation instead of isolation

Lifelong learning, earlier work

The dreams we need are self-reliant dreams. We need dreams based not on what is but on what might be.

The new job of school [is] … Not to hand a map to those willing to follow it, but to inculcate leadership and restlessnss into a new generation.

In the connection revolution… Value is created by connecting buyers to sellers, producers to consumers, and the passionate to each other.

In the connected world… scarcity is replaced by abundance— an abundance of information, networks and interactions.

The only people who excel are those who have decided to do so.

The essence of the connection revolution is that it rewards those who connect, stand out, and take what feels like a chance.

The future of the economy lies with the impatient… who will refuse to wait to be hired and will take things into their own hands, building their own value, producing outputs others will gladly pay for.

Dreams fade away because we can’t tolerate the short-term pain necessary to get to our long-term goal.

Leadership is the most important trait for players in the connected revolution. Leadership involves initiative, and in the connected world, nothing happens until you step up and begin, until you start driving without a clear map.

What do you think of our schools today? Is there hope for our children’s future?